


The Mind-Killer

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Anxiety, Gen, Phobias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-28 13:01:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15049622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: On watch one night, Jester asks Nott about her fear of water.





	The Mind-Killer

**Author's Note:**

> For real, those tags are not incidental mentions. Also featuring: torture, drinking to self-medicate, you know, normal Nott stuff.

It's Jester who brings it up again.

Nott's been waiting for the question since the fight under the safehouse. She'd thought it would be Molly, poking at her the way he pokes at everything; or maybe Fjord, with that stupid invasive pity in his eyes. Or even Caleb – _if you ever want to talk to me, about this specifically_ – not pushing at her exactly, but waiting, waiting and waiting and waiting for her to answer. She doesn't want to try and crack this open for anybody, but least of all in front of Caleb. He needs to be able to trust her.

But instead it's a watch, with the sun just coming up over the pines, edging the sky in gray, and frost making little starbursts on top of all their packs, all their blankets. Jester and Nott are both huddled close to the fire, Nott building a little tower of usefully-shaped twigs and Jester sketching in her notebook. Nott's actually almost relaxed, stretching her feet out to the fire, and then:

“So why are you so scared of water?”

“Fuck!” Nott almost knocks over her tower; she has to yank the last stick back rather than place it, flicking it off into the grass. “You startled me – do you always start conversations like that?”

“I mean, we've been sitting here for a while,” Jester says. “It's not like you didn't know I was _here._ ”

“Yes, but I thought we were just going to sit quietly,” Nott protests. “I didn't think we were talking about our feelings.”

“Someone always talks about their feelings on watch now,” Jester says.

“Well, maybe Fjord and Molly talked about theirs, you know, filled the quota for the night –”

“No-oott.” Jester's voice is gentle, singsong. “You're avoiding the question. I'm very good at listening, you know. You should let me help you with it.”

“Are you going to throw me in the water until I stop being afraid of it?” Nott asks, shifting her weight so her shorstword is easy to grab. They're not actually near any more water than a little stream – although a person can drown in a little stream, face-down and pinned or trapped or too drunk to stand – anyway, she feels better with it to hand. She also tugs her flask out of her belt.

“ _Nooo_ , I'm not going to do that,” Jester says. “That'd be so mean! No, I just want you to tell me.”

“I've told you all already,” Nott protests, unscrewing her flask. “I just don't like it, that's all. People drown.” The whiskey is hot and comforting at the back of her throat. She's told it's cheap whiskey; she doesn't care. It's what she's used to.

“Did you almost drown once?” Jester asks, inching closer.

“No!” Nott takes another gulp of her whiskey.

“Did you drown somebody?” Jester asks, peering close to Nott's face. Nott scoots back, holding the bottle up between them: “No!”

“Did you drown somebody just a little?”

“ _No!_ I mean – I got the water, for... waterboarding – it's not about that, all right? It's not about anything.”

“I don't believe you,” Jester coos, but at least she's stopped pushing into Nott's space. “Was it somebody you cared about who drowned?”

“Nobody drowned!”

“ _No-ott._ Come on. We're friends, right?” Her voice drops, a little; she stares, lacing her fingers together. A log pops in the fire, sparks dancing up like a Caleb-flame between them, over the sudden stillness in Jester's face. Jester is almost never still; she skips from place to person to prank like a stone on the surface of the water. Stillness shrinks her down until she barely seems any bigger than Nott. It makes Nott think of Caleb, knees pulled up to his chest in the corner of the cell; it makes her think of huddling under a hanging branch, listening to the clan's laughter rise on the far side of the trees.

“Aren't we?” Jester asks. “Friends?”

“Of course we are, Jester. Of course we are.”

The movement starts at the corners of Jester's mouth, curling up, and Nott can breathe; then Jester claps her hands and bounces closer, jewelry swinging. “Great! Okay, so, now you're going to _tell me_ , right? Tell me everything?”

“There's really – there's nothing to tell!” Nott gestures with her flask, nearly spilling; a quick jerk of her wrist saves it. “I mean, I saw somebody drown once, but I've seen people die a lot of ways, and most of them don't bother me.”

“Like what?” Jester asks. “How else have you seen people die that doesn't bother you?”

“Well...” Nott starts counting off on her fingers. “Stabbed, slit open, shot, poisoned, sick, set on fire, clubbed over the head by a giant lollipop, set on fire again, crushed, starved to death, died of cold, Molly shouting at it in your weird language, weird... magic... tentacles, blown up, burned to death with acid, bleeding out because no one could fix a bandage properly, bleeding out for other reasons, fell off a cliff, getting decapitated –”

“But you're not scared of any of those,” Jester cuts her off.

“I'm scared of all of those, all the time,” Nott corrects, “except maybe the lollipop, because I've never seen anyone do that except you, and I'm _fairly_ sure you're not going to kill me.”

“Not unless you do something really really bad to me first,” Jester agrees. “I mean, we're friends, we just said, right? What kind of person goes around killing their friends?”

“Exactly.” Nott tries her absolute best not to glance over at Caleb. It's not even the same thing – friends and family are different, though she couldn't name what separates them – and besides, it wasn't his fault. It was Trent Ikithon's.

“But you go near things like fire and crossbows and cliffs,” Jester interrupts her thoughts. “So why do you hate water so much?”

“I don't know, all right?!” Nott's voice cracks; she shrinks back into her cloak, ears flattening to the sides of her head. “I don't know. There isn't a good reason. I just _do._ If Fjord were scared of water, that would make sense, but nothing like that ever happened to me. It _just scares me,_ every time, until I can't handle it, and I don't know why. I don't have an explanation. It's just something that happens to me, for no reason. It's like getting the itch, and no, I don't know why I get that either!”

Beau rolls over in her sleep, snorting a little. Nott catches her breath. Her throat hurts, a little; her fingers ache. She takes another furious swig from her flask, swirling the burning over her tongue.

“I know it doesn't make any sense, really,” she says. “I mean, usually it's possible _not_ to do something, unless someone is using magic on you or... whatever. But I can't stop myself, except by drinking, which doesn't always work either, and it gets worse when I'm frightened too. And it doesn't make any sense to me either, but it just... keeps happening.”

Her fingers are tight on the flask; her shoulders are knotted tight as wire, and it twinges when she lifts her head. Jester is sitting exactly as she was, her knees curled up to her chest.

“What's your favorite thing you ever stole?” she asks. Nott blinks, and blinks again.

“I... does Caleb count?” she asks. “Or Hezza?” She takes another breath. “Or there was a really pretty brooch, one time, and some really good cherry wine – not the one that got me arrested, a different one – oh, and some really nice ribbons, and –” She takes another breath. “Stuff.” Slowly, she trails one finger through the cold dry dirt. “I don't only steal things because – for no reason. Sometimes I just need them, or I just want them, or... I just don't like the person who has them. But sometimes it just happens and I don't know why.”

“Usually when that happens to me it's the Traveler,” Jester says. Her eyes widen. “Oooh, maybe he's talking to you!”

“I... don't think so,” Nott says, her mouth going dry. Gods are unsurvivably big things, and better left alone.

“I think he'd probably have mentioned it,” Jester says, drumming her fingers on the symbol at her waist. “If you were another friend of his. I don't know if he talks to a lot of people the way he talks to me. I think he thinks I'm special.”

“I'm sure you're very special to him,” Nott assures her. It's good to be back on the topic of other people. Jester beams.

“Yeah, I'm pretty cool.”

Another log pops in the fire. The soft sound of an owl echoes through the woods. A breeze lifts the sweaty hanks of Nott's hair and sets the chain on Jester's horn jingling, a soft music in the night.

“The person I saw drown,” Nott says, very quietly. “He wasn't anyone important to me – he was someone chasing us, actually, because we'd stolen some of his chickens. There was a log over a river, you know...” She gestures vaguely, one finger bridging another two. “He tried to follow us over it, and he was a lot bigger than we were, and, well, _sploosh_.” She shrugs. “So we got away, which was good, but I turned back to watch – I guess I wanted to see if he got out, if he was going to keep coming after us? It wasn't a very fast river, but he was just floundering around, not knowing how to swim, and he...” She shivers. “He just stopped fighting, eventually. That's what happens when you drown, isn't it? You just can't... make yourself keep fighting anymore. Sooner or later you can't stop yourself from breathing in, even though you know it's a bad idea, and it's going to kill you – but you do it anyway, no matter how badly you don't want to.”

She glances up, swallowing. Jester is watching her still, fingers laced under her chin like Nott is a fascinating bedtime story.

“Is that the part that really scares you?” she asks.

“Dying scares me,” Nott answers. “All of it scares me.” She digs her claw a little deeper into the dirt. “But, yes, that's the part I keep thinking about. When I try to go in the water.”

“Well, if I see you start drowning,” Jester says, “I promise I'll come in and get you before you die, okay? I'm a really good swimmer.”

“You say you're good at a lot of things, and sometimes you're not very good at them,” Nott points out, and immediately bites down on her tongue. “I mean, not that you aren't good at a lot of things, you're very strong, and good at... _your_ kind of magic, and –”

“I'm a good enough swimmer to stop you from drowning, okay?” Jester cuts her off, folding her arms. “And I have this spell called Control Water so I can just get the water to spit you _out,_ so it doesn't even matter really whether I'm a good swimmer or not.”

“I... thank you, Jester,” Nott says, twisting the ring of water walking around on her finger. “That helps.” It doesn't. It's almost worse, when she knows she's not in danger and the fear comes hammering under her breastbone anyway. So, so often, crouched outside a farmhouse she'd robbed a dozen times before, she used to feel her heartbeat quicken, feel her fingers start to twitch, and know that it was coming again. _What if I freeze? What if I panic and go running the wrong way? What if my hand shakes undoing the lock and I break it and get it stuck? I'm already so scared; what if it gets worse? What if, what if, what if_ – It was then she started carrying her flask.

“See, I'm really good at helping people too,” Jester says. And then she inches a little bit closer and slings her arm over Nott's shoulders, pulling her close. Nott goes stiff, ears shooting straight up.

“I – oh – oh, okay.” Slowly, she takes a deep breath in through her nose, blows it back out. Jester smells – well, a little bit like blood and mud and old stale sweat, like all of them do, but under that she smells like lavender. Her skin is oddly cool to touch; cooler than Caleb ever is, or anyone in the clan was, and _much_ cooler than Molly, who on rainy nights fills the whole space under the wagon with heat that Nott can feel from the far side of the wagon's shelter.

She's still warmer than the night air, though. And she's soft, all smooth, pampered skin, and she's plump enough that her shoulder is pillowy and comfortable to lean on. Which Nott does.

“You know,” Jester says, “we all think you're _super_ brave.”

“I –” Nott blinks. “That's right. I earned my comma.” She smiles, a little. It's not like it's a real thing, but – it's a nice thought. “Now I just need not to lose it again.”

“Oh, you're not gonna lose it,” Jester scoffs, flicking her hand like she can fling the very idea away. “Even if you're scared of water for no reason. It's okay.”

“It isn't, really,” Nott says softly. Because it isn't.

“Well, we can help if you want us to,” Jester says, shrugging. “But it's not like a big deal. Maybe Molly's scared of spiders or something.”

“...that seems kind of unlikely,” Nott says, glancing over at his bedroll.

“Yeah, but if he was it wouldn't matter,” Jester says. “Hey, maybe I should put one in his backpack and find out.”

“It might make him angry,” Nott says. “I mean, if someone threw me in the water to find out if it frightened me, I'd be _very_ angry.”

“That's a good point,” Jester says, pursing her lips. “I'll just ask him in the morning.”

There's a pause, while the crickets chirp out in the forest.

“We both see pretty well in the dark,” Nott says at last. “Do you want to play I Spy?”

“Oooh!” Jester sits bolt upright. “I'm really good at that. I spy, with my little eye... something that begins with T!”

“Tiefling?” Nott tries. “Tree? Toilet? The horse, I mean.”

“Yeah, it was Toilet,” Jester says, beaming. “Your turn!”

They finish out the watch with I Spy, and let the rest of the conversation lie.

 


End file.
